Mile 1499 to 1514
“whoah whoah whoah! If we're cowboy camping, we're all cowboy camping!”
The town of Mt. Shasta was quite nice, but we gotta hike! We rang a local trail angel (the one who provided the coconut water) and got a ride down I-5 and back to the trail. With 6 days of food in our backpacks, they were heaaaavy. We are now eating so much food that the weight of it is a true concern! In the desert we were lucky to eat 2 pounds a day. Now, I eat between 4-5000 calories a day which, even with dense food, weighs over 3 pounds. Calories/ounce is a very real metric that we are all starting to take seriously! In case you’re interested, olive oil and peanut butter are the best bang for your back (get it?) and even though they are heavy, they are calorically dense. If you couldn’t tell, I spend a good amount of time thinking about these things (to Fey’s dismay).
Anywho, with our heavy packs we set off for an entire day of climbing. It seems to always end up that way. Go into town, load up your pack, and then climb a big mountain out of town! Whatever, we’re Slow Magic and we know how to do things right. We took a long nap in the middle of the day and ate as much food as possible to remove the burden from our shoulders.
We didn’t make it too far before camping in a teeny tiny spot on the side of the mountain. At the time, it was Dayhike, Jetpack, Animal and myself. I “decided” (was more or less forced by the terrain) to cowboy camp as there simply wasn’t enough room for all of our tents. However, to add to the fun, Hawkeye and Maverick showed up just as the sun was setting, and we moved bodies around like a jig saw puzzle to fit us all in the ridiculously small space. Maverick, Hawkeye and myself formed an ‘H’, with me in the middle of their perpendicular bodies.
To add to the excitement, some large clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We discussed the chances of rain, but pssht, this is California and we haven’t seen rain in over a month! Not 2 minutes later did we see lightning. Oh boy, so the lightning picked up and the clouds were ominous and after we all said, “no big deal, we’ll just pull our rain flies over our body if it rains,” the idea of spending the entire night under a thin piece of plastic touching my forehead and echoing the sound of rain throughout my skull was making me rethink my decision. Hawkeye simply waved his hand at me and assured me we would be fine.
It was at this point that Animal wanted to put the rain fly on his tent, to which I smacked him down to declare, “If we're cowboy camping, we're all cowboy camping!” No rain fly for you!
Ultimately, I fell asleep to bright flashes of lightening and awoke dry, semi well rested and without a snake in my bed. Total success.
